What’s Important to Canadians?
A recent Angus Reid study has revealed some interesting (even if not surprising) things about what Canadians value. Here are a few highlights.
96 per cent of respondents say having enough free time to do what they want is very important or moderately important to them. Achieving career success (89%), volunteering (74%) and having children (72%) are also high on the scale of accomplishments.
Following their religious beliefs (46%), being wealthy (53%) and tying the knot (55%) are not valued as highly by Canadians across the nation.
More men (58%) than women (53%) view marriage as an important part of life.
What to make of this? There are lots of things that could be said, but I'll leave it at this for now: There is a profound irony here.
The trendy emergent crowd says that evangelicals are out of touch, fighting yesterday's battles about things like marriage, feminism, and other family issues. Yet, these seem to be the very areas where our culture needs to be challenged and corrected.
The ironic twist is completed when we notice that most of the excitement in the emerging crowd is directed to issues like social justice (with a high emphasis on volunteering), not being a religious zealot, and fighting against the drive to be rich. Yet, none of these seem to be out of line with what secular people in Canada already think.
While the conservative evangelicals are accused of being out of touch, the hip emerging crowd preaches what the culture wants to hear--and what they already believe. Why would we expect anything else?
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry.
Free Online Don Carson Sermons
Here is a listing of all the free online D.A. Carson sermons that these guys have found. They're broken up under categories, such as 'The New Perspective on Paul', 'The Emerging Church', 'Eschatology', 'The Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament', etc. There is even this message here, in which D.A. Carson declares what Toronto needs the most.
Thanks to the twins for this head's up!
The Myth of Homophobia
I don't believe in homophobia.
I know there are people who don't like homosexuals. I know there are people who are incredibly uncomfortable with the thought of being "hit on" by a gay person. I know there are people with all kinds of bizarre ideas about what "causes" one person to be homosexual while the majority of people remain straight. But I don't believe in what is commonly referred to as homophobia.
People throw this word around as a term of derision at anyone who expresses discomfort or displeasure or disapproval with the prevalence, common acceptance, and forceful agenda-pushing of homosexuality. It somehow seems ironic for "them" to give such a derogatory label to those who disagree with them. Isn't it they who desire for openness?
The common use of this word "homophobia" is propaganda, plain and simple. If you disagree with the proposition that homosexuality is a "legitimate alternative lifestyle" then you are a homophobe. No one wants to be a homophobe. So if it's a choice between the two, people will just simply choose to accept homosexuality--not because they feel comfortable with it, but because they don't want to be labelled "bigot", "homophobe", "religious fundamentalist", etc.
Like any sin, homosexuality is built off of and continues to feed off of pride. If I can make everyone else accept my sin then maybe I'll feel better about myself and my conscience will quit bothering me.
The truth of the matter, however, is that homosexuality is sin. It flies in the face of all that God created humanity to be. It pushes men to not be men and women to not be women--but God created us to be those so that we could bear his image! Being gay destroys the image of marriage as a picture of Christ and his bride (if you read Eph 5 carefully you'll see that the marriage of Adam and Eve was designed in order to represent the relationship that God would one day have with his people... it's not like God saw marriage and then one day thought, "hey that's kinda like a metaphor for me and them!").
It is natural that what remains in us of the image of God would be repulsed by what is so blatanly ungodlike. This is especially true for Christians, because we have seen the wonder and the beauty and the infinite wisdom of God in his creation. We have seen from his word the kind of people--men and women distinct, yet equally wonderful--he wants us to be. We have seen that there are reasons for all that God requires of us, and that all these things are beautiful.
In this culture, in this day, in this city everyone says it is wrong to be repulsed by homosexuality. "Don't speak about it loudly... someone might hear." It has gotten to the point now where I've caught myself (a) not being repulsed by blatantly gay things around me, and (b) feeling bad when I am repulsed by it.
This must stop!
I'm not homophobic, but it grosses me out and I think it should! It is an abomination before the Lord, a perversion of the created order, and blatant, proud, boastful, haugty, flagrant sexual immorality in the heart of men and women who care nothing for God or the wonder and splendour of his righteousness and who presume on his patience and forebearance.
To speak of this sin as what it actually is is not homophobia and I will not be ashamed to declare that homosexuality is wrong. I don't hate anyone for their sin, but I will no longer shrink back from calling a spade what it rightly is... no matter what.
The Catchphrase That Can’t…
Much has been made in other places about the cheesy PoMo quasi-evangelical catchphrases such as 'dialogue', 'story', 'journey', 'romance', etc. I would like to comment here on the term 'conversation.'
A 'conversation' is apparently when more than one PoMo gathers, and they begin to speak. They pile up one non-descript cliché (see above for some popular choices) on top of another, each describing their own 'authentic experience' (their story) which becomes, to each of them, uniquely authoritative for their own journey.
Perhaps the reason why these ones are so quick to devalue language and its inherent meaning is because they simply have chosen to create a dialect of their own, in which each one of the seven (7) words they know becomes entirely defined by its own context (the word's story??). Interpretation, then (and thus, meaning, as well), is entirely in the ear of the hearer.
No wonder they can connect and have such wonderfully meaningful 'conversations'... Everyone tells me my own interpretation of their story... which I interpret the way I do because of my own story... how wonderful!
All that, however, is simply by way of introduction. The reason I wanted to write about the term 'conversation' is because I feel it has been violated, perhaps worse than the others.
It is often stated that the truly 'missional' Christian will not seek to win 'converts', but rather to make 'relationships' which will lead to truly 'meaningful' and 'mutually beneficial' conversations. Only mean old moderns want converts. Hip missional Christians know that conversations are much better.
But that is a lie. This catchphrase simply doesn't work the way they want it to work (which is quite sad, really, because it does sound very pious of them).
The trouble is that conversation is not the goal of a Christian. Conversion of sinners is. While I understand that many emergent types are reacting against the old 'crusade' style of evangelism, they are throwing not just the baby, but also the mother, out with the bathwater.
To be a Christian means that I love God. It is to God's glory to see sinners saved. That's why he sent his Son... that's why we're called to go to every nation and make disciples. We're not told to go to the ends of the world to stake our share in the marketplace of ideas.
To be a Christian means that I love others. I love because God first loved me. Being saved, I know that it is to the benefit of any man, woman, boy, or girl to be saved. To know Jesus is the most eminently wonderful joy the soul could ever know. Why would I want to deny to someone that I really want them to know the greatest, truest, only absolutely sovereign joy the world will ever know? So that we could 'have conversation'?
What a joke.
Either you desire sinners to be saved, or you're not a Christian because you obviously haven't understood that it's to the glory of God and for the good of the person for them to be saved!
So one of two things is happening here. Either these wonderfully conversational emergent types are really seeking conversions through conversations (which seems awfully deceptive... why not just say what you mean? Tell them what you really want!) or else they really think that the world has as much to offer them as they have to offer the world.
If the latter is their mindset than I would argue it is true. The world does have as much to offer as they do... which is absolutely zero. Only a heart that has never experienced the true grace and love of God in the forgiveness of Christ and the comfort of the Holy Spirit could ever think that the world has anything to offer them.
The Self-Policing Church
I don't know why it continues to amaze me, but it does: God is concerned with purity. He hates sin and will not tolerate the arrogance and abomination of sinners in his assembly. Of course, this makes sense, given that he himself is "holy, holy, holy"; altogether separate, pure, and entirely other from us.
As I've been reading through Deuteronomy again the past few days it has hit me that over and over again God demands purity in his people because he is pure. But more than that, he demands that his people maintain a standard of purity and holiness as well, because of their relation to him who is pure! They are to be a people holy, even as he is holy, because they are to be a nation of priests: witnesses of him to the world.
The repetition of this theme throughout Deuteronomy (the Mosaic "farewell discourse" as the people of God prepare to enter the promised land) is astounding. What is even more astounding is that they are to "police" themselves! See here for some examples.
So that was then, what about now? If this was how the people of the OT were to handle sin and impurity, what about the people of the NT? Afterall, the OT is "copies" and "shadows" of the real things. The Church, in the NT is the true "chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for (God's) own possession" (1 Peter 2.9).
This idea of being a people and nation for God in the NT--just as in the OT--is used to exhort God's people to increased purity and holiness of life! That's why Peter continues: "I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul..."
This is more than an individualistic call to a righteous life. It's a call to consider the fact that we are a people who are to represent God collectively, as a nation! When our members begin to make mockery of the God we are to glorify by the way that they live, we are to purge the guilt of that sin from our midst.
Obviously that was easier to do, theoretically, when they people of God were a physical nation, but it is no less important now. For the church to be effective in glorifying the God of holiness by remaining pure, she must be "self-policing."
Where it seems many in our day have trouble with this is this notion that the Christian "ought never judge." The problem here is mistaking a concern for the glory of God's name in the purity of his people with a self-righteous pride. The solution, it would seem, is for Christians concerned with the glory of Christ and the purity of his bride to remain humble "gate-keepers" and for all Christians to be open to loving correction.
In a culture that says no-one is allowed to correct anyone, this would be light and salt indeed.
And in a western-world where it seems that much of Christendom has nothing else to do, other than to re-discover old heresies abandoned in the purification of the church in days of persecution in the past, this means we must police our own doctrine as well. It would be absurd to think that God is this concerned with his glory in the way that we live, because it represents him, but that he won't care if we teach (or "discuss" or "humbly question") the wrong things about him.
A father is embarassed when his boys misbehave at school. He's also embarassed when they describe him to their teacher as a guy who "looks just like us... only more girly."
Glorifying God as his chosen, holy nation, means acting like him and describing him as accurately as possible in all circumstances. To this end, the church must be "self-policing," watching our life and doctrine closely.
The Word of God
Subscribe
Click the logo for posts by e-mail
Recent Comments
- Bersiya on On the ‘Inadequacy’ of Language
- Julian on My Little Monsters
- Don on My Little Monsters
- Celebrating beauty - Words of Eternal Life on The Beauty of My Wife
- Luciana Hamilton on Why Do You Hide Yourself, God?
Blogroll
- Darryl Dash
- Ian Hugh Clary
- Jake Rivers
- Louis Tullo
- Nick Mitchell
- Paul McDonald
- Paul W. Martin
- Tim Challies
- Trevor Peck
Other Useful Stuff
Pages
- About Julian
- Articles
- 30 for 30: Reflections on Life at My 30th Birthday
- An Exegetical Analysis of 2 Cor 6:14-7:1
- Augustine the Friend
- How to Find Comfort in the Cross When Suffering Because of Christians
- Martin Luther on Prayer
- My Lord and My God
- Open Theism and the God of Isaiah
- The Divorce ‘Exception’ Clauses in Matthew’s Gospel
- Contact Me
- Good News
- Sermons
Our Church
Sermons from Our Church
- Life in a Perfect World (Part 1)
- God, His World, His People (Part 2)
- God, His World, His People (Part 1)
- The Foundations of Understanding
- Praying to the Triune God